We orthodox Catholics tend to be a tight-knit bunch. We’re great at complaining about unfaithful Catholic politicians, and we love to compare shock stories about the worst liturgies we’ve attended. (“Oh yeah? Well, when we were on vacation last summer, we went to a parish and the priest...

You may have heard about the controversial Cincinnati Catholic school contracts, which require teachers not to publicly support things contrary to Church teaching. If you haven’t heard about it, here’s CNN’s story highlighting all the teachers that are terrified of being fired;...

Maybe I’ve spent too much time listening to World Youth Day coverage and reading articles like this one written by a friend of mine who ran our college’s vibrant Catholic Society. I was surprised to find this article by Hemant Mehta on CNN’s Belief Blog explaining why young people are...

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard about the baby with Down Syndrome who, it looks like, will not be aborted after all because some 900 families offered to adopt, thanks to Facebook and Fr. Vander Woude. If you haven’t heard, I think the Arlington Catholic Herald, my diocese’s paper,...

Seems like, lately, everyone’s been writing about how much women should wear, why it matters (or doesn’t), how too-strict standards can be emotionally damaging, and how we’re all contributing to the rape culture. I agree that modesty is important, but I’m sensing an unhealthy dose of...

I’m 24 years old and two years out of college, which puts me at that age when nearly all my friends are getting married. It seems to me very common that young married couples of the “good Catholic” variety are beginning their marriage with a year or two (or a few) of NFP. Our generation...

Everybody knows that men don’t understand women, but I think it’s easy for us women to play some sort of nuanced superiority card and pretend that our natural feminine intuition is enough to understand men completely. Or at least sufficiently. We like the idea that we’re naturally good...

I want to change the world, and I think I can do it. But I’m a young 20-something, and the older adults I meet tend to be jaded. “I thought we could save the world by doing thus-and-such,” they say, “and look how that turned out.” So, of course, I worry that when I hit 30, I’ll...

A few months ago, I quit the full-time job I’d landed right out of school, married a college senior, moved four states away, and planned to find work. It was taking longer than we expected, so in the meantime, we pinched our pennies: no bottle of wine to celebrate our first home together, no...

“New research shows that The Pill reduces lubrication, arousal, and a woman”s ability to orgasm, thus lending credence to my theory that a lot of hormonal birth control “controls” whether or not you give “birth” by making you never want to have sex. We just...

Many of the pro-abstinence, anti-contraception types (mostly Catholics) will say that the “Don’t have sex, but if you do, use contraception” approach to reducing teen pregnancy is inherently flawed. They’ll say that the approach sets expectations low, and that it effectively says...

It’s interesting how different reality looks when it’s on paper, in neat paragraphs, all in the right order. There, I am a powerhouse. I am strong; I am adventurous; I am embarking on a mission with eternal consequences and not looking back.
But for all my talk of heroism and mission,...